Jessica Levy on the Strange Career of Black Empowerment
MAR 4, 202642 MIN
Jessica Levy on the Strange Career of Black Empowerment
MAR 4, 202642 MIN
Description
Today, we welcome Jessica Levy, co-host of Who Makes Cents, onto the program—not as an interviewer, but as a guest. She's here to talk about her remarkable new book, Black Power, Inc: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics. This book traces the strange career of black empowerment: from civil rights protests to the boardroom, and from the streets of urban America to the townships of South Africa. Black empowerment, she reveals, was a protean concept, at once radical and conservative, that allowed different constiutencies to sometimes push for change, and at other times, to co-opt more transformative alternatives. Along the way, we'll grapple with a big question: is it possible to use corporations to combat the inequalities that racial capitalism has created?